Bizarre Wedding Things....

I know I don't blog about it much, but yes, we are still planning on getting married :) We actually have the date and venue all set.

Okay, I have a confession.
Please don't think any less of me.
Today my Mom, and Dick and I went to a Bridal Faire! (eek!) I know, I kind of can't believe that we went either, but we thought it might be worth checking out to gather some info on cakes, photographers, etc.,

Truth be told, it wasn't as crazy as I expected, which was a relief. I thought it was going to be much larger, but we were done after an hour and a half. I told Dick, "It's kind of like MacWorld, for weddings..." to which he replied, "except that these people are a lot more aggressive!"

That's the truth. I was actually pretty turned off by how super-friendly and aggressive most booth people were... although I understand that it probably works well for them.

But really... here's how it went:

We stop (briefly) at a booth, just to see what they have.
Immediately, we're asked, "SO, you're getting married!"
us: Uh, yeah.
booth: SO, when's the big date?"
us: Um, well, October...
booth: OF THIS YEAR?
us: yep.
booth: Well, you'd better hurry then!
us: yeah, okay.
booth: CONGRATULATIONS!
us: okay. thanks.

I'm not kidding. that happened numerous times.

It made us joke about the same scenario at a MacWorld convention:

booth: So, when'd you buy your iPod?
us: I got it for Christmas.
booth: GREAT! Have you put all of your music on it yet?
us: yeah, we've been working on it
booth: Well, you'd' better get to it fast!
us: um, okay.
booth: Congratulations!
us: thanks.

hee hee. The visual makes me laugh.

I was flipping through a bridal magazine that we got from the show.
I have to say that so far, I'm not finding these things particularly helpful. Maybe that's just me.....
Anyway, here was something that blew me away
It was a letter to the editor:

Q. My little sister keeps on telling me that I'm snappish. And my best friend is always complaining she never sees me anymore. Don't they understand that I'm planning a wedding?

A. If you're tired of reminding them that you're just a little bit stressed, stop talking and start shopping. Classy Bride's black baby-doll tee that says BRIDE in caps reminds your friends and family that there's a reason you're on the edge. You're busy!

Oh my. There's so many things that are wrong about both the question and the answer, that I don't even know where to start.
I've asked my sister, and numerous friends to let me know if I come anywhere close to becoming "that girl". Or, anything that even hints of it. I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't happen, but the thought of it makes me shudder.

Jury Duty follow-up

I've got to say, I've quite impressed with the judicial system in San Francisco.

As you know, I served on jury duty last week. Yesterday, I received a letter in the mail yesterday from the judge who presided over the case. I'm very impressed with the unexpected follow-up.

Here's what it said:

Dear Ms. Chow,

I want to personally thank you for serving as a juror on the People vs. (defendant's name) case. Those of us in the justice system are well aware that jury duty invariably involves personal sacrifices along with the frustration of what appears to be an unwieldy system. Your commitment in accepting this important responsibility ensures that our system of justice continues to work and work well. You time, energy, integrity and patience were critical components in this case and in the American justice system.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for improvement as a result of your jury duty, please drop me a note. We are proud of our new "one-day, one-trial" system and its reduction delays, but we know we can do better.

I sincerely hope that your experience was interesting and worthwhile. I certainly enjoyed having you in my courtroom. Your participation as a responsible citizen is to be commended.

Very truly yours,
(judge's name)
Judge of the Superior Court

Word.

This is probably pretty old, but it's the first time I've come across it. Makes me laugh.

Word, yo.

Generous Deeds

I called my State Farm Insurance representative today to go over some tidbits about my condo insurance.

My parents have had the same insurance agent (for our houses, and our cars) ever since they moved to Milpitas in 1978. Our agent, Bob Hollister, has always been so nice to all of us, and has been an excellent agent. He gives us very good rates, and is quick to follow up on any claims that we have submitted.

When I talked to him today, I mentioned that Dick and I are engaged now. He was so sweet, and expressed his congratulations to us. He asked if we knew whether or not we'd need "event endorsement" insurance for the site. I told him we would, but that I didn't have the information quite yet.

He let me know how much it would be, and then he paused and said, "You know what Trina, I'd really like to take care of this for you. Your parents have been such good customers, and they've been with me for so long. I've known you ever since you were a little girl. I'd really like to do this for you."

I was speechless.

What a very kind, and generous offer.
What a very, very nice man.

Done with Jury Duty

This just in.. I'm done! Yay! I've fulfilled my jury duty commitment - for the year, at least.

The whole process what actually very interesting, and I'm happy to have had the experience. It was a criminal assault case. We listened to witnesses for 3 full days, then spent a day (Thursday) deliberating. We came to a unanimous verdict by the end of the afternoon. We read our verdict to the judge and the court Thursday afternoon, and quite frankly, made the assumption that we were done. To our surprise, we were asked to return to the jury room. The judge said that she had to discuss "something" with the attorneys. An hour later, we were thanked for reaching a verdict, and we were instructed to return to court on Tuesday at 10:00am.

Huh?

So, we all went home - confused, a little disgruntled because we weren't told why we needed to return.
I figured our questions would be answered first thing this morning.

We all returned this morning at 10:00, and were instructed to please come back again at 10:45.

ugh

We all came back at 10:45, and waited outside the courtroom for another 45 minutes before they finally asked us to come back in.

The judge thanked us again, and told us that we were dismissed. Apparently, they were in court all morning discussing an issue that they thought they might need us for, but in the end, they decided to have the judge make the final ruling.

So that was the anticlimactic end to my week+ of serving on jury duty.

All in all, it was actually a good experience. It was an interesting enough case, and it was good to learn how the whole system works.

President's Day

When did "Washington's Birthday" become "President's Day"?

I remember that when I was in school we celebrated Lincoln's Birthday one week, followed by Washington's Birthday the next.

So, it seems that we still celebrate Lincoln's Birthday, but Mr. Washington now shares his birthday will ALL Presidents?

a-ha. Here's an article about this on sfgate.com.

Blogger from the past

I just read an article in sfgate.com stating that after 11 years, Justin Hall has stopped blogging. That's wild.

I worked with Justin many, many years ago. We worked together way back in 1996 at Electric Minds. (It was my last summer before finishing art school, and I was working for Abbe Don at that time) Justin was the first person to teach me the art of HTML text/layout formatting - pulling out words and quotes from the straight HTML paragraph, and formatting them so that they would stand out in an artistic way. Back then, Justin was probably only 22 or 23. He was the first person that I ever met who had an online journal that he constantly updated. We have a word for that now, of course: "Blogging".

According to this article in sfgate.com, The New York Times Magazine had labeled Justin Hall as "The founding father of personal blogging".

Over the years, I checked into his site on rare occassion. Mostly just to see if he was still out there, and what he was up to.
I hadn't thought to look at it over the last couple of months. Reading about him on sfgate.com was a heck of a way to catch up on him and his blog.

The web is a pretty wild place.

Stocking Up!

I'm such a sucker for a good sale/bargain.

Gatorade is on sale this week at Safeway for $.79. It's usually $1.99.

Dick and I went through a lot of gatorade while we were sick, so it was time to restock anyway. Good timing!

My sister and I have this crazy little game that we play with grocery receipts. We like to see who can come up with the largest savings by both dollars, and percentage.

I think I may have the winning ticket here:

I bought 36 bottles (3 cases) of Gatorade today. (I know, it's excessive, but it was such a good sale, and it'll keep)

My total was: $31.22
Club card savings: $43.20
Total Savings value: 58%

:)!

Psssst.... Hey Buddy, want a kitten?

Oh my goodness... this is so cute.

I just got an email from an old high school friend who is now living in New York. Greg has a friend who recently adopted a stray cat, and it turns out that she was pregnant.

She gave birth to a litter of 5 kittens last week.

Look how cute they are!!

They are looking for a good home for the little ones.
Anyone interested?
They are in New York, but perhaps something could be figured out.

Happy Hatch Day!

My sister's pet cockatiel, Crissy, turns 25 today.

Yep, you read it right: 25 years old.

Unbelievable.

We adopted Crissy in 1980 when she was only about 6 weeks old.

It's no secret that Crissy and I never really got along. She used to attack me, and chase me out of my own room.
She adores my sister, though. She lives with her now in my sister's apartment.

When we first got Crissy our vet at the time told us that Cockatiels usually have a life-span of about 15 years. She's obviously well past that age now. Our current vet (who we have been seeing for well over 15 years now) has said that Crissy is that oldest Cockatiel that he's ever known.... and she's still going strong!

25 years! That means that she's older than our two friends (Aditya & Ami) that we had dinner with last night!

There's some perspective for you.

Xbox Powercord Recall

This doesn't seem to be too serious, but probably good to follow-up on anyway....

Microsoft recalls Xbox cords after users burned
Free replacements available via Web or toll-free number

Here's the xbox.com page.

Showing our Age

We just got back from a very nice dinner with our friends Aditya and Ami. They are much younger than Dick and I (they are in their early 20s) and something inevitably comes up in our conversations that remind us of the generation gap - usually some sort of Pop Culture reference.

As Dick and I were walking home, he started to "whistle a happy tune". Well, actually, he was whistling "Darling Nikki" from Prince's Purple Rain, which I recognized immediately. I laughed, telling Dick, "You know, Aditya & Ami wouldn't know that song...."

Then I mentioned that I had just listened to that song, along with the rest of the album a couple of weeks ago.

Here's the funny part: My exact words were: "I just listened to that song on my Walkman a couple of weeks ago".

On my Walkman.

Oops. There's a slip! Must be showing my age. ;)

Ah yes, it's true - I was lucky enough to get a Walkman (generic brand, NOT a Sony) from Santa when I was 13 or so - right around the time that they came out.

You know.... about 20 years ago.

That's when I realized that iPods are the Walkmans of the new generation.
(not to be confused with Prince and the Revolution or even Prince and the New Power Generation.... HA! Now we've come full circle! ;) )

We live in such interesting times....

Mmmmmm. Corn Dogs.

The Doggie Diner Head has found a new home!

For some reason, I'm quite fond of the Doggie Diner Head. It's quite appealing to me.
Dick I have gone to the Carousel Restaurant several times over the years to enjoy a yummy lunch of corn dogs and milkshakes. (Mmmmmm)

We're also in the routine of going to Carousel for lunch whenever we go to visit The San Francisco Zoo. Which, granted, has only been about 5 times or so....

This is a photo that I took of the Doggie Diner Head a couple of years ago when it was still adjacent to Carousel.

I'm happy to see that the Doggie Diner Head's new home is just a few yards away from it's last home.
It also happy to think that you'll still see the Doggie Diner Head smiling at you as you drive down Sloat Blvd on your way to the ocean.

Civic Duty

I just got home (early!) from serving my second day on jury duty.

Without going into any details at all about the case, here's some of my random impressions about serving jury duty in SF:

I'm reporting to The Hall of Justice on Bryant Street between 6th & 7th Streets.

Unfortunately, there aren't any good public transportation options for me, so I'm driving my car there.
We get $3 dollars off the cost of parking at the lot across the street, but it's still $9/day! Seeing as I may be serving jury duty both this week and next, that'll really add up! I think we'll get compensated $15/day, plus $2.50/day for mileage. Whoopee ;)

Another thing that I noticed is that *everyone* jay-walks while crossing Bryant Street, going to the Court House. Isn't that funny, and very ironic? There's a police station right there. It's a very long block, so it would be very out of the way to go all of the way to either intersection, so everyone just jay-walks. You'd think they'd put a pedestrian crosswalk in the middle of the street.

We get 1 1/2 hours for lunch break. I've decided to stay in the area to eat, because the parking lot does not have in/out privileges. I've been walking down to The Trader Joe's on 9th/Bryant for lunch. I had a nice salad yesterday for $3.00, and an 8-piece order of California Rolls today for $2.69. Not Bad. I also went shopping at Nordstrom Rack today. That was fun! I bought a cute little fitted down jacket. I made sure to leave enough time to walk back to the parking lot (so I could put my shopping bag in my trunk) before going back to the court house. I figured it would be a faux-pas to walk back into the jury box with a big shopping bag :)

As I said, we're scheduled to report this week, and next week if necessary. We'll see how long it takes. It's hard to say, as I've never done this before.

Happy Valentine's Day!

However you choose to celebrate, (or not) have a Happy ♥ Day! :)

Flu-be-gone

For the first time in over a week, I slept through the whole night last night, without being woken up every couple of hours by fits of coughing. I woke up feeling much better. I think I may be finally almost over this flu bug!

The cleaners came this morning, which was perfect timing. I decided to utilize my newfound energy to rid the house of whatever flu germs may be lingering. It's a gorgeous day out, so I opened all of the windows to air out the house. I also did several loads of laundry - including the sheets & towels.

The house and I both feel much better now :)

80's music quiz

This is a great 80s music quiz

Dick and I took it this morning, and we scored 65.

There were a lot of answers that we actually did guess correctly, but we misspelled the name/word. Oh well, what are you going to do? *I* know that we got it right ;)

We did really well on the early questions, but by the middle of the quiz, our brains had turned to mush from too many song lyrics dancing around in our heads.

I'm especially proud that I got #44 correct and that Dick got #83.

Let's see how you do!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's the year of the Rooster! Any Roosters out there?

Time to Venture Out....

After a full week of being sick and being cooped up in the house, it's time to go outside again.

And how's this for a reason:

Jury Duty.

Yep, tomorrow I have to report to jury duty at 9:30am. I consider myself lucky that I hadn't been called in earlier this week: I got a couple of extra days to get over this flu.

Truth be told, I haven't actually had to report to jury duty before, so I'm kind of curious to see what it's all about.

Stop. Jammie-Time!

One of the perks of staying-home-sick, is that you get to lounge around all day in your pajamas with no guilt.

I am a BIG fan of lounging around in a comfy pair of pajamas! I suppose one could argue that I *could* do this everyday, since I work from home. However, I assure you that I really do make every effort to take a shower and put on street clothes. :)

Anyhow, back to the jammies....

I love pajamas. I have several pair.
I have to admit that I stopped wearing most of them about 5 years ago when I discovered the best.brand.of.pj's.ever.

Several years ago, I was the web designer for Camp Sark - a company that was based upon the writer/artist known as SARK. They had a fund raiser in form of a Pajama Party - it was held at the Hotel Monaco in San Francisco. I volunteered at the event. Many stores and orgainzations donated goodies for all of the guests. One of the items donated was a pair of Karen Neuberger pajamas for each person.

After wearing my new pjs at the event, they quickly became my favorite pair of pajamas! I soon noticed that they became the only pair of pajamas that I wanted to wear. I don't know what it is: something about the blend of the materials - it's just SO comfortable!

Over the years, I've met several other people - women & men who agreed: ever since they put on their first pair of Karen Neuberger pajamas, it's the only pair of pjs that they'll wear! I have since recommended KN pajamas to friends and family - everyone always loves them. I now have two pairs for the winter, and another set for summer.

So, the point is: if you're a pajama fan, go out and find yourself a comfy pair of Karen Neuberger Pajamas! You can find them in department stores like Macys or Nordstrom, and also at discount stores like Marshall's or Ross.

In fact, Valentine's Day is coming up! :) Go buy your sweetie a pair of comfy jammies!

Progress..

Today I managed to get out to the grocery store. Our rations were running low ;)
I was pretty tired when I got home, so I took a nap.

ah, these are exciting days....

Childhood comforts

I promise that my blog will be interesting again someday...


As I mentioned before, my chest is completely congested, and I spend all my waking hours coughing. Dick went to Wallgreens today, and picked up a jar of Vicks Vaporub for me.

I haven't used this stuff since I was a kid. I was sick often when I was growing up, and had a lot of upper respiratory problems. My Mom used to use Vicks Vaporub on me, and it always made me feel better.

I put some on tonight, and that smell immediately brought back all kinds of childhood memories. It was actually very comforting. Plus, I forgot how well this product really works! I can't believe it hasn't been in my medicine cabinet all these years :)

Feeling Better...

and now for the his 'n her condo health report.....

Well, today is the first day that I haven't had to take a nap. That's a good sign.

We're feeling better, but still taking it easy. My mind is much more clear today, so as soon as my body catches up, I'll be good to go!

Today was the first day I actually felt like talking with people - I chatted on the phone a bit, had a quick visit with my sister, and even managed to play some Halo2 without passing out!

I am, however, coughing up a lung or two....

That's pretty much the worst of it - lots, and lots of coughing. It kept me up all night (and Dick, and the kitties, too).
We're also really low on energy here.

I'm really bummed because we had to pass on dinner at Roy's tonight :(. My parents are taking my sister out for her belated birthday, and also before she leaves to go to Boston for a month. I'm so bummed that we can't make it.

The good news is that Noe feels better today! :)

One of these days, I'll try to leave the house again....

The family that stays together....

gets sick together.

I'm sick. (but feeling better than yesterday)
Dick is sick (feeling a bit worse than yesterday)
Noe is sick (poor little thing)

Marcel better get out of the house while he can!
(he's walking around with a mask over his nose and mouth)

I was reading my cousin Bruce's blog yesterday. It said that he and his family (his wife, and their three daughters) have been passing around the flu with each other since the weekend.

I guess that's what's going on over here, too. Only, I didn't know that our poor kitties would get sick as well!

Our front door should have one of those Caution ribbons wrapped around it.
"Contamination Zone - Beware"

iSick

Looks like I finally caught that flu that's been going around.

I've had a sore throat for the last couple of days, but last night it really hit me.
My whole body aches. :( I've been in bed all day.

I can't remember the last time that I was sick, which I suppose is a good thing.

Dayquil & Nyquil are my friends.

I'm crawling back into bed now.
*cough*